Another classic post. Both companies have significantly expanded their product lines. GW continues to screw the FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) but Army Painter continues to fight on.
As anyone who has seen my blog knows I’m a fan of The Army Painter. I’ve been looking forward to their new line coming out. The delay in introducing their new lines, I think, is a real missed opportunity for The Army Painter. With GW introducing the new ridiculously sized paint range means that retailers that have previously carried Citadel paints are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Those racks the paints are stored on are provided by Citadel in exchange for a minimum order size when they start carrying them. Yes, you usually get them at the standard 40% discount from MSRP but you have to buy a good bit. If you sell lots of paint, that isn’t bad. But, with the new line, you are going 6 times 145 boxes of paint (Paint from Citadel is shipped in boxes of 6 BTW) times $2.22 USD wholesale. So a basic full rack will run $1934 wholesale. That’s before primer, tools, etc. Holy crap, that is a LOT of money for an FLGS to invest in something that will take the sale of a TON o’ paint to make their cost back. That is assuming that they aren’t discounting their paints.
As you can tell from looking at the old style paint racks GW provided there isn’t any extra space.There are also some pretty strong embargoes against using the racks for anything other than Citadel paints. So, with the new line coming out, retailers are going to have to really lay out a huge amount of cash to get the new line and the new paint rack. Meanwhile, they still have a big supply of their old Citadel paints they either take the loss and sell them at a steep discount or stick with them until they run out and hope people will buy them still. FYI, the racks themselves are traditionally provided free by the manufacturer since they enhance their sales. It’s the carrot to their minimum order stick.
The Army Painter had a real chance to sneak into the marketplace with some size by giving people an option of selling a line of really really good paints, washes, etc as well as encouraging people to venture into using their sprays. Retailers costs are so much lower for them unlike Citadel to get their entire line. Well, with the delay, that really means that retailers, at least in the US, have the option of Vallejo & P3. TAP really did have a big chance. I for one hope they are able to do as well and become as popular as I know they should be.
I really do wish the Army Painter well and look forward to seeing their paint racks up close.
Dear reader, a postscript. The fine people over at The War Store provided an AMAZING paint conversion guide between new and old lines of Citadel paints as well as Vallejo paint lines. Kudos gents, kudos. Here is the link for the PDF conversion chart.
